Ars Technica system guide: December 2011

Like to build your own computing rigs? The Ars system guides have you covered …

After a fairly dull year for new hardware releases, this fall's flood-related hard disk production damage in Thailand made things more "interesting." Toss in AMD's new CPU, Bulldozer, along with cheaper and cheaper SSDs, and your computer build options can be confusing. We're here to sort them out.

The bottom line remains the same as it always does—the System Guide builds get faster and cheaper.

System Guide Basics

The traditional Budget Box ($), Hot Rod ($$), and God Box ($$$$$) builds address three different price points. These are all general-purpose systems with a strong gaming focus, which means you won't find any office boxes or bargain-basement machines here.

The low end of the scale, the Budget Box, is still a capable gaming machine despite its reasonable price tag ($600-$800). The Hot Rod represents what we think is a reasonable higher-end general-purpose computer that packs plenty of gaming performance, although we've adjusted the price tag a few times recently, from $1400-1600 down to $1200-1400... and now, perhaps back up to the old point to reflect new capabilities and jumps in performance. The God Box remains closest to unchanged from previous incarnations, a very capable starting point for a high-end workstation. It should be an excellent starting point for anyone with a good idea of their truly high-end computing needs, be it gaming to excess after winning the lottery, taking advantage of GPU computing, or storing and editing tons of HD video.

(The God Box, excessive as it is, always has a slight dose of moderation, described in previous guides as: "God wouldn't be a glutton.")

Each box comes with a full set of recommendations, down to mouse, keyboard, and speakers. As these are general-purpose boxes, we skip things like game controllers and $100 gaming mice, (although the God Box does get something a little nicer than commodity parts). We also discuss alternative configurations and upgrades; today's guide reflects the appearance of affordable SSDs and the recent spike in hard disk prices, the video card battle between AMD and Nvidia, and the plethora of monitor choices if you have a little more money to spend.

Hard disk prices and the bits

Two major events make their mark on this update. First, AMD's Bulldozer was released this fall to underwhelming reviews at best. Many observers hoped this would shake things up against Intel's dominance the past few years, but we'll have to wait at least for AMD's next refresh, codenamed Piledriver. This is compounded in the System Guide by the fact that AMD's current strength, low-end systems based on the Llano APU, is not a good match for our three main boxes.

Second, there was real damage to the hard disk supply chain this fall, which is expected to last into Q2 of 2012. The Hot Rod and God Box are more insulated from this kind of pricing shock, as storage is a relatively small part of the cost, but the Budget Box build required some interesting discussions.

Finally, it pays to be at least aware of future events expected in Q1 of 2012: new GPU architectures from AMD and Nvidia, plus Intel's Sandy Bridge-EP for Xeons. Q2 2012 is also expected to bring Intel's Ivy Bridge chips. But the future always threatens to make current parts obsolete in the tech world, and you can't always wait for the next big thing. For those who want a solid build now, let's take a look at our entry-level option, the Budget Box.

Intended as a solid foundation for an affordable gaming box that is also suitable for all-around use, the recent hard disk price spikes force some difficult choices in the Budget Box. We opt to avoid maxing out the top of the price range in favor of keeping it more affordable, but still manage to squeeze in quite a bit of CPU power.

CPU, motherboard, and memory

Intel Core i3-2120 retail

MSI H67A-G43 motherboard

Kingston 4GB (2x2GB) DDR3-1333 1.5v (KVR1333D3S8N9K2/4G) memory

AMD and Intel have long battled for position in the Budget Box. For the past few years, AMD has been able to offer more cores and cheaper motherboards, making it the choice for the Budget Box.

Intel finally makes it into the Budget Box in this round, though, thanks to several factors. One factor that actually is not a reason is CPU price: thanks to other components getting cheaper, we can fit a slightly more expensive processor into the Budget Box, as opposed to a cheaper Pentium G850 or similar. Suitable motherboards for Intel processors have come down a little in price, and finally, per the benchmarks, Intel's Sandy Bridge architecture CPUs hold a performance and power consumption lead enough of the time to matter.

Going with the AMD Athlon II X4 645 (3.1ghz, 2MB L2) and its four cores vs. the dual cores of its Intel competitors may make sense for specific uses, but we feel that the Intel chips are competitive enough to make them worth the choice.

Balancing features, performance, and cost is a little more delicate with an Intel board in this price range; the H67 chipset does not permit overclocking, but it does support onboard video (should the Budget Box builders choose to skip a discrete video card), SATA 6Gbps, and most models support USB 3.0, which we consider essential. Switching to a P67 or Z68-based motherboard allows overclocking but costs a few bucks more.

AMD builders will want to look at AMD 870-based boards if no onboard video is needed, or AMD 880G-based boards for onboard video. An alternative option for AMD builders is to switch to AMD's new socket FM1 platform with an AMD Llano-based APU, which gets on-die graphics a few steps up from Intel's HD graphics; we skip this in the Budget Box because the Llano APU is still much too slow for a Budget Box capable of acceptable gaming.

Heatsink: make sure to pick up a retail boxed CPU, as the included heatsink/fan will be more than adequate. Overclockers buying a P67 board can look at ones such as the Coolermaster Hyper 212+ without worrying too much about cost. And memory, right now, is extremely cheap. We stick with major name brand DDR3-1333 at the JEDEC-standard 1.5v for optimal compatibility. 4GB is enough for virtually all uses, although 8GB isn't that much more.

Video

Gigabyte Radeon HD 6850 1GB (GV-R685OC-1GD)

We'll be blunt: if the best gaming performance is desired, scraping up a few extra bucks for a Radeon HD 6870 or Geforce GTX 560 is probably money well spent. The Radeon HD 6850 is more than capable (per Xbitlabs), but it is clearly slower than cards such as the Geforce GTX 560 and its bigger brother in reviews.

In fact, the GPU sweet spot is closer to the Hot Rod's price range, so resist the urge to go too crazy in the Budget Box unless you're very specific about goals in your individual Budget Box.

Non-gamers could go with integrated video, assuming they pick the right motherboard, although this has serious gaming implications for even casual gamers and the latest titles.

We could knock the CPU down a notch (or completely max out the budget) and fit a slightly better video card, but given the lower power consumption and better performance with the current choice vs. previous Budget Boxes, we feel this is a viable combination; individual Budget Box builders can make the call on extra GPU performance.

Sound, communications

Network card: none (on-board)

Sound card: none (on-board)

Onboard sound and gigabit Ethernet work well enough for almost all Budget Box users.

Those seeking more can look at the Asus Xonar DG or Xonar DX for audio; the list of alternatives is fairly short at the moment, and a discrete sound card is decidedly not critical to the Budget Box.

Storage

Sandisk Ultra 120GB SSD (SDSSDH-120G-G25)

LG 22x DVD-RW (GH22NS90B)

The flooding in Thailand did considerable damage to the hard disk manufacturing base. Previous updates would have had a 500GB or 1TB drive in the Budget Box with cash to spare, enabling either a lower priced Budget Box or a bump up in video card, CPU, or other areas.

Combining fall 2011's Thailand flooding with the current evolution in SSDs (solid state disks) has lead to an unusual change: we skip the traditional, cheap mechanical drive and go solely with an SSD in the Budget Box. The previous-generation Sandforce SF-1222 controller in the SSD we use still offers an order of magnitude better performance than any mechanical disk, while the cost of flash memory has dropped enough that we can finally get enough space (120GB) into the Budget Box without feeling too cramped. Plus it avoids the BSOD issue that seems to be affecting the newer Sandforce controllers.

Some Budget Box users may need more space and should budget accordingly; even in these times of high hard disk prices, a 500GB or 1TB 7200rpm disk in place of the SSD is doable at the expense of performance. The latest hard disks today use 1TB/platter disks, making for nice bumps in performance vs. older, lower-density disks, although the gap between HDs and SSDs is still enormous.

Optical drives have been a commodity product for the past few years, and the DVD-RW we choose is no exception. The picky may want a Samsung SH-S243N or a Lite-On iHAS524, but the performance differences are small. A BD-ROM is also affordable, should Blu-ray be necessary. Heck, even a nice Blu-ray writer such as the Pioneer BDR-206DBK isn't too bad.

Case and power supply

Antec NSK4482

It is possible to save a few bucks here by buying the case and power supply separately, but finding a quality set separately and still managing to save a few bucks gets tricky. The easy way out is to pick up a quality combo such as the Antec NSK4482, which includes a decent (but not great) Antec 380W PSU and the very decent NSK-series chassis.

Should you prefer to source yourself, the Corsair CX430 V2 or Antec Neo ECO 400W might work as a power supply, along with the NZXT Source 210 or Antec Three Hundred. Shop carefully for deals, though, to make sure it's worth your trouble and that the deal is actually a deal; several "value" cases out there don't add up well, especially when quality and design (or lack thereof) become hinderances. Don't forget the importance of personal preference, either; buy what suits the build.

The Antec NSK4482 includes a decent 380W from Antec's Earthwatts Green line, 3x5.25" external bays, 2x3.5" external bays, and 3x3.5" internal bays, plus one 120mm fan installed in the rear and space for one 80mm fan in the front.

Monitor

Acer G235HAbd 23" LCD

An abundance of low-cost 1920x1080 LCDs makes for a wide variety of choices in the Budget Box. Fortunately, the low-cost panels they all use don't have too much variation; unfortunately, frequent model changes sometimes make things hard to track.

The Acer G235HAbd is one model we're familiar with. As a 23" 1920x1080 panel, it packs an acceptable response time and fairly low input lag, making it suitable for gaming. Asus has a few other acceptable ones—but so do a host of other manufacturers, and tracking one important measurement (input lag) is almost impossible as it's rarely listed on spec sheets. Viewing angles and color reproduction on TN panels tend to be good enough, but if a nicer monitor is needed, the Hot Rod and God Box pack a wealth of information.

For those who want something a little nicer, though, keep an eye on affordable e-IPS panels such as the HP ZR2240w, Dell U2212HM, LG IPS226V-PN, and their brethren. IPS panels tend to have better color reproduction and viewing angles, but they do cost more. They are also equally subject to variations in input lag and response time from model to model, so doing specific research before buying is strongly recommended.

Mouse, keyboard, and speakers

Altec Lansing BXR1221 2.1 speakers

Microsoft Wired Desktop 400 (keyboard and mouse)

The demise of the Microsoft Business Hardware pack (keyboard and mouse) leaves us sad, as it was an affordable combo for a very decent keyboard/mouse setup. The Microsoft Wired Desktop 400 is an acceptable replacement, but there are others out there. Due to the intensely personal preference in keyboards and mouse, we recommend individual builders try a few out before settling on something.

Serious gamers may consider riffing the Hot Rod's selection for a better gaming experience, as the Logitech G400 mouse is a very nice piece of kit.

For speakers, the Altec Lansing BXR1221 is a basic 2.1 setup that does the job. Most computer speakers are so-so to middling quality at best, and finding exceptions is almost impossible, even in boxes costing twice as much. Find something that works, and consider headphones if quality-for-your-money is a top priority.

For the budget box, Intel might win at retail prices but thanks to AMD having several new lines out the X6 Phenom IIs are often pretty good value. I just put together my own budget box this weekend (I had a budget of $500 to upgrade the guts of my PC) from parts mostly ordered over black friday. I managed to wind up with two SSDs (one for OS, slower one for apps), a 6 core CPU, motherboard that will support second generation bulldozer chips, 8GB of RAM and a 4890 (it meets my GPU needs) without breaking my budget (well, if you include shipping costs I did. But I prefer not to)

I like these guides but I wish the God Box was a little less stupid or there was another level in between. What I mean is the price jump from Budget to Hot Rod is 2x and then 10x from Hot Rod to God Box.

It'd be nice to be able to shoot for a high-end rig that's a little more realistic than a list of the most expensive parts in the google shopper catalog.

I'm a bit amazed you didn't mention the Phenom II 960T. It's a 95w quad core that you can unlock to a hexcore in many cases for the same price as the i3... I'd say it's a better value, or at least an equal value considering price/performance and power requirements.

If you didn't read the guide, the Budget Box has always been in this price range.

As David T. asked for, and the Guide explicitly states, there is a lower-priced $500-targeted Ultimate Budget Box that we do on occasion.

Also note that the Ars System Guide include monitor, mouse, keyboard, and speakers, unlike some other guides.

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For the budget box, Intel might win at retail prices but thanks to AMD having several new lines out the X6 Phenom IIs are often pretty good value.

Where were you in the discussion thread we ran earlier this month?

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'm a bit amazed you didn't mention the Phenom II 960T. It's a 95w quad core that you can unlock to a hexcore

AMD's sorta been on a losing scale here given not only performance, but power consumption. So when no one else in the previous discussion thread mentioned it and we didn't think it was worthy of comment-- agreed, that may have been a slight oversight.

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I like these guides but I wish the God Box was a little less stupid or there was another level in between. What I mean is the price jump from Budget to Hot Rod is 2x and then 10x from Hot Rod to God Box.

Yeah, that's the occasional Performance Gaming Box that we do.

Unfortunately or fortunately we have to put limits somewhere into what individual Guides cover, or else we'd never get them done...

Wow. For some reason I thought I had a relatively mid-range system, at least for a gaming system.

But aside from the CPU (which is the same, since no game needs more than a 2500K anytime soon) mine stops the Hot Rod into the dirt.

Really what we're seeing across all builds is that if it's at all possible to hold off on buying a hard drive (even if it means recycling your old, slow drive from the system you're replacing) it's worth it.

I'm building the hot rod soon. Except mine will have i7 in the $250 range (instead of i5), NVidia in the $250 range (ATI? no thanks), and one of the new hybrid SSD/platter HDs under $200.

Aren't those all still 2.5"? You might get better performance using a Z68 chipset with SRT (Intel makes a SSD with the same type of flash used in Seagate's hybrid drive). Buy two standard hard drives, RAID 0 them, install to the RAID array, install Intel's RAID management software, and tag the SSD for SRT duty.

Sorry, but even when I'm only gaming with 1920x1200, and only two monitors (the other hooked up is 1680x1050), with aero turned on, playing Skyrim at full settings with a handful of texture mods, I've seen my graphics RAM usage hit 1.6GB. This is already more than the 580 setup, no matter what funky thing you do, can handle.

I love the idea behind the god box, but 96GB RAM is pointless, only 2x 30" monitors is silly (get 3 of them and do eyefinity), and clearly the option for the graphics should be two 6990s in Crossfire, with a completely custom watercooling system.

Pretty fine work otherwise, but still, graphics RAM is easier to chew up than people are told, ESPECIALLY with surround gaming/eyefinity. All told, I wouldn't consider making a God Box right now, because Southern Islands are JUST around the corner, and the top cards come with 3GB VRAM per GPU, right off the bat. Now that's what I'm talking about.

Yeah, $700-$800 is pretty much the floor for a machine capable of playing any newer games, at least if you're including peripherals. If you can't afford that budget, then look at the components and figure out what you want to cut from there. Same with the Hot Rod...if it's not a Hot enough Rod for you (and the God Box is obviously obscene) then start from there and add as desired.

The only real omission I see is a copy of Windows, which for gaming will generally be a requirement.

Really? Only 8 GB RAM in the Hot Rod? That's not enough for any serious workload in these days of VMs, and RAM is staggeringly cheap. I'd strongly urge anyone who is building such a box for any usage other than HURR DURR GAMURR to at least double that.

Really? Only 8 GB RAM in the Hot Rod? That's not enough for any serious workload in these days of VMs, and RAM is staggeringly cheap. I'd strongly urge anyone who is building such a box for any usage other than HURR DURR GAMURR to at least double that.

I disagree. If people want to run VMs, then let them get more RAM. 8GB for a machine like that, targeting what is basically mid-high end gaming, is absolutely adequate.

I also see you're putting 4 GB in the Budget Box. Even $300 Wal-Mart PCs often have more than that these days. Spend the extra $20 to go to 8 GB and stop putting up with endless swapping.

You do realise it's a budget gaming machine, right? 4GB doesn't cause endless swapping under these conditions, especially seeing almost every game released is a 32-bit executable. I DO however agree that you should go for 8GB seeing as it's dirt cheap, but claiming "endless swapping" on 4GB which is designed as a budget gaming rig is pretty over the top.

I'd still go to the i7 2600k for the hotrod and drop the graphics card down a bit for a more well rounded machine. The BF3 demo played fine on my three year old box with a Radeon 4850 which wasn't even a top end card at the time.

Create junction points (in Windows at least) to the RAM disk, setup a script to copy 60GB or so of your most-used games and apps to it on bootup.

Copying 60GB into RAM on bootup from an SSD should be ridiculously fast, and running apps from RAM rather than an SSD will be insanely fast.

I see, so instead of spending more money on a faster SSD RAID0 setup, you're wasting time on every boot to chew up RAM. No, this is still silly.

Depends how often you boot. Also, it would take quite a few SSDs to match the performance of RAM (along with some of the hassles of running a RAID)...IIRC, it's upwards of ten times as fast.

If you were looking to save money, yes it's something I'd probably cut. But if you're looking to save money, you're not looking at that ridiculous rig anyway. My purpose is that it serves a purpose, and improves performance.

I'd still go to the i7 2600k for the hotrod and drop the graphics card down a bit for a more well rounded machine. The BF3 demo played fine on my three year old box with a Radeon 4850 which wasn't even a top end card at the time.

Absolutely disagree. The 2500K is designed for you to get your hands dirty and boost the clocks a bit, and you're already then beyond a stock 2600K.

For gaming, you really think 8 threads is going to help you vs 4? Hint: it doesn't, but the graphics card absolutely will. 2500K and 6950 is still a good decision.

Create junction points (in Windows at least) to the RAM disk, setup a script to copy 60GB or so of your most-used games and apps to it on bootup.

Copying 60GB into RAM on bootup from an SSD should be ridiculously fast, and running apps from RAM rather than an SSD will be insanely fast.

I see some issues with that approach. Game code is CRAP. It is cranked out by younger inexperienced developers. Some games will barf all over themselves if they aren't installed where they expect to be installed.

The speedups will be mostly related to launching the game, and saving/loading the progress. (There really weren't any long level loading times in games I've played in recent years.) Is it worth it?

So you have an insanely fast storage, only to have to wait to launch the game ANYWAY because of half a dozen logos and a cheezy intro video that can't be skipped.

The OS memory management may perform suboptimally with so much RAM stolen from it. Launching your 2-3 favorite games may be faster, at the expense of overall performance.

Create junction points (in Windows at least) to the RAM disk, setup a script to copy 60GB or so of your most-used games and apps to it on bootup.

Copying 60GB into RAM on bootup from an SSD should be ridiculously fast, and running apps from RAM rather than an SSD will be insanely fast.

I see, so instead of spending more money on a faster SSD RAID0 setup, you're wasting time on every boot to chew up RAM. No, this is still silly.

Depends how often you boot. Also, it would take quite a few SSDs to match the performance of RAM (along with some of the hassles of running a RAID)...IIRC, it's upwards of ten times as fast.

If you were looking to save money, yes it's something I'd probably cut. But if you're looking to save money, you're not looking at that ridiculous rig anyway. My purpose is that it serves a purpose, and improves performance.

I really don't think it will help in the way you imagine. Yes, I realise working on RAM is massively faster, but do you really want the hassle of writing in to RAM everything you need first, and then writing back to the SSD when you shut down? What if the power gets cut or your machine hard locks? It's an absolute mess to deal with, and almost nothing other than, say, video capture in high resolutions, is going to benefit from that much speed over a raid array (or indeed, something like the FusionIO ioDrive PCIe SSD - a good candidate for all-out storage speed, go expensive as you want up to 10TB, 6.7GB/s read, 3.9GB/s writes).

NO THANKS. I think I'll go with my own expertise. Hell, your "Basic" build's video card will run damn near every game on max settings just fine. (I have a 6850 HIS vid card and the 120+ games I have on steam run max everything.)

Anyways.... note to all the readers that happen to see this comment, please don't follow these instructions. While they are just a "guide" they steer you into thinking more is better for pc gaming. Simply not true. You don't need a top of the line video card or raid or crossfire/sli to have a fantastic gaming experience.

NO THANKS. I think I'll go with my own expertise. Hell, your "Basic" build's video card will run damn near every game on max settings just fine. (I have a 6850 HIS vid card and the 120+ games I have on steam run max everything.)

Anyways.... note to all the readers that happen to see this comment, please don't follow these instructions. While they are just a "guide" they steer you into thinking more is better for pc gaming. Simply not true. You don't need a top of the line video card or raid or crossfire/sli to have a fantastic gaming experience.

This is also true. My laptop (Dell Precision M4400, Core 2 T9550, Quadro FX770M, 4GB RAM) can play Skyrim just fine. Sure, I have to drop the settings, but it's perfectly playable, and doesn't take away from the pleasure of the game.

I'm not convinced a ~100GiB drive will be sufficient for most users. Just installing Windows, Office and my standard pack of media software and freeware utilities takes upwards of 75GiB. Add a modest media collection plus normal temp/cache files and you'll quickly need to start micro-managing your disk space. The performance advantages of an SSD are quite tangible, but be aware that you will encounter space limitations with a 120GB SSD.

In addition, the SF-1xxx suffered from their share of BSOD issues, so the problem is certainly not limited to the new SF-2xxx based drives. Personally, I lean toward the Crucial RealSSD drives, which offer 80% of the performance at the same cost without the reliability headaches.

One last tip: If you don't plan on overclocking your CPU, you can save $20 by getting the regular non-K processors. You also get VT-d, which provides VM's high-speed direct access to hardware, such as graphics and network cards. Consumer virtualization products should support VT-d fairly soon.

I disagree. If people want to run VMs, then let them get more RAM. 8GB for a machine like that, targeting what is basically mid-high end gaming, is absolutely adequate.

They defined the mission of the system as "general purpose, with a strong gaming focus."

General-purpose to me includes web development, which a whole lot of ordinary people do, at least at some level.

Web development means VMs. People need to test their sites in at least eight major browsers spanning at least two OSes.

8 GB is not enough to make this very common usage comfortable. 16 GB is. A $1400 box shouldn't feel limited in any general-purpose task.

We're basically agreeing here, of course. More RAM if you run VMs, of course. I just don't think that's the sort of thing EVERYONE does. At work I wouldn't even try, because my work machine has 4GB RAM, but I would just create a test VM on the Dell PowerEdge server with 2x 6 core opterons for that very purpose instead.

I disagree. If people want to run VMs, then let them get more RAM. 8GB for a machine like that, targeting what is basically mid-high end gaming, is absolutely adequate.

They defined the mission of the system as "general purpose, with a strong gaming focus."

General-purpose to me includes web development, which a whole lot of ordinary people do, at least at some level.

Web development means VMs. People need to test their sites in at least eight major browsers spanning at least two OSes.

8 GB is not enough to make this very common usage comfortable. 16 GB is. A $1400 box shouldn't feel limited in any general-purpose task.

I'd argue that web development, and pretty much anything involving VMs, falls under "special purpose," not general purpose.

General purpose, for the bulk of people, means document editing, playing media, maybe posting to some form of CMS, etc.

If you need to run VMs, you are already an outlier. So drop the extra $30, or cut elsewhere, and add more RAM. Duh.

Just to say, I do web development work in VMs pretty much every day for my job (I like to code in Linux, but prefer Windows for regular computing) and I haven't felt constrained by 8GB. Sure, 16GB would be great, but it's certainly not necessary.

Create junction points (in Windows at least) to the RAM disk, setup a script to copy 60GB or so of your most-used games and apps to it on bootup.

Copying 60GB into RAM on bootup from an SSD should be ridiculously fast, and running apps from RAM rather than an SSD will be insanely fast.

I see some issues with that approach. Game code is CRAP. It is cranked out by younger inexperienced developers. Some games will barf all over themselves if they aren't installed where they expect to be installed.

Which is why you use junction points. To the game, it IS installed where it expects to be.

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The speedups will be mostly related to launching the game, and saving/loading the progress. (There really weren't any long level loading times in games I've played in recent years.) Is it worth it?

Nope. Which is why I won't be spending $13K on a computer.

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So you have an insanely fast storage, only to have to wait to launch the game ANYWAY because of half a dozen logos and a cheezy intro video that can't be skipped.

Level loads and such are always a pain. Plus sometimes you can tweak a couple things and skip those videos as well.

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The OS memory management may perform suboptimally with so much RAM stolen from it. Launching your 2-3 favorite games may be faster, at the expense of overall performance.

K.I.S.S. The simpler is always better when it comes to technology.

I think the system would perform just fine with the 20+ GB of remaining RAM. But yeah, KISS is usually better, and I hadn't considered having to write data back to the SSD (I was thinking in terms of apps that keep their data in a user directory, rather than the app directory).

The Budget Box motherboard commentary mentions that the H67 does not allow overclocking, unlike the P67 or Z68, but you never mention that an Intel CPU can't really be overclocked either, until you reach the i5-2500K in the Hot Rod. I would probably still take the stock i3 over an overclocked AMD alternative, and not mention the P67 for the Budget Box at all (or see the Hot Rod CPU + MB for intel overclocking).

I disagree. If people want to run VMs, then let them get more RAM. 8GB for a machine like that, targeting what is basically mid-high end gaming, is absolutely adequate.

They defined the mission of the system as "general purpose, with a strong gaming focus."General-purpose to me includes web development, which a whole lot of ordinary people do, at least at some level. Web development means VMs. People need to test their sites in at least eight major browsers spanning at least two OSes.

We're basically agreeing here, of course. More RAM if you run VMs, of course. I just don't think that's the sort of thing EVERYONE does. At work I wouldn't even try, because my work machine has 4GB RAM, but I would just create a test VM on the Dell PowerEdge server with 2x 6 core opterons for that very purpose instead.

Using VMs and web development are not the sort of things everyone does, but then again, building a system from scratch, or getting one custom-made is pretty far from average also. I think the average American user is buying a laptop at a big-box store. With that in mind, going a bit higher-end makes sense. Otherwise there's not much reason to build. You can get an android tablet for $100.